“The mayor spoke to Michael Harris,” said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, referring to the reporter. “He said he was sorry that Michael was offended.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s words did not exactly satisfy Mr. Harris, who held his own news conference outside City Hall on Friday to both praise and rebuke the mayor, nor did it satisfy advocates for the disabled, who criticized Mr. Bloomberg for appearing insensitive.

In an interview, Mr. Harris said Mr. Bloomberg spoke to him for less than three minutes and told him that he apologized if Mr. Harris was offended.

“Which is not totally sincere,” Mr. Harris said. “The mayor’s apology was a conditional apology. But I believe it was sufficient to allow us both to move on.”

The tape recorder incident occurred on Thursday morning, when Mr. Bloomberg joined other city and state officials at Gov. David A. Paterson’s Midtown office for the governor’s announcement of a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage.

As Mr. Bloomberg began to read from written remarks, someone bumped into Mr. Harris’s tape recorder in the pocket of a jacket Mr. Harris had near him, activating the play button and the sound from a rally that Mr. Harris had taped earlier.

“Let me start again, because this is just too important,” said Mr. Bloomberg, sighing impatiently. It took Mr. Harris, whose mobility is limited, almost a minute to turn off the recorder.

For advocates for the disabled, the episode brought to mind President Obama’s recent gaffe on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” when he compared his bowling skills to a performance in the Special Olympics. (Mr. Obama later apologized.)

“I hesitate to beat up on the mayor, because I don’t think he intended anything, but good intentions only get you so far,” said Lawrence Carter-Long, director of advocacy for the Disabilities Network of New York City. “His response showed a lack of awareness and a lack of sensitivity.”

Many disabled people in New York seemed to agree.

Kerry Scott, 44, who is blind, had listened to excerpts of the news conference and said he was disappointed with the mayor. “Because of the situation he should have been softer,” said Mr. Scott as he returned to his Chelsea apartment on Friday. “He shouldn’t have been that harsh.”

Immediately after the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Harris, who covers government affairs for Examiner.com, a lifestyle Web site, said he was not angry at Mr. Bloomberg. But by the end of the day, he said the mayor owed him an apology.

On Friday, he issued his own news release, identifying himself as the reporter who was “the subject of the mayor’s ridicule.”

At his news conference on Friday, Mr. Harris attracted half a dozen television cameras — more than most New York City officials not named Bloomberg would have attracted.

And while he said that he accepted Mr. Bloomberg’s apology, he was clearly still bothered by the incident.

“I’m going to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt and say that it may not have been intentional, and the mayor may have not recognized the issues and the barriers that I face,” said Mr. Harris, a disability rights advocate who uses a wheelchair because of dystonia, a neurological disorder. He added, “I feel that the mayor’s apology was sufficient — I don’t want to say sincere, I want to say sufficient.”

Mr. Post, the spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said that during the conversation Friday morning, Mr. Bloomberg reminded Mr. Harris that the city provided a handicapped-accessible van to take Mr. Harris to news events and “takes steps to accommodate his needs so he can function like any other reporter.”

That rankled Susan Dooha, executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York, an advocacy group, who said she thought the incident was “a nonevent,” but was bothered that Mr. Bloomberg’s spokesman drew attention to the fact that the city provides handicapped-accessible accommodations.

“It is Mr. Harris’s civil right to be reasonably accommodated, and there’s nothing special about it,” Ms. Dooha said.

“If the mayor’s office views reasonable accommodation as somehow a special favor, then it would seem to me that they would benefit enormously from some training on the Americans With Disabilities Act.”

Another advocate suggested that the whole episode, however minor, might serve as a teachable moment. “This is going to sound a little Pollyanna-ish,” said Edith Prentiss, the vice president of legislative affairs for Disabled in Action, a civil rights organization, “but it does show that a person in a wheelchair can do a job.”

David W. Chen and C. J. Hughes contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: A Bloomberg Apology (Sort Of) Is Accepted (Sort Of). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe